Great Throughts Treasury

"Excrement, incestuous person. I require my copulating currency, incestuous person."

"Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory."

"Faith and docility are the bulwarks of Tsarism; any hint of scientific knowledge, rationality or even plain "horse sense" among the serfs are its major worries, and it blocks them every way it can. No Tsar will ever lavish such praise on scientists or other professional skeptics as McCaffery lavishes on the faithful and the sheep-herders who lead and fleece them."

"Guerrilla ontology."

"Existence is larger than any model that is not itself the exact size of existence (which has no size)."

"He (Wilhelm Reich) had a great capacity to arouse irrational hatred obviously, and that's because his ideas were radical in the most extreme sense of the word "radical." His ideas have something to offend everybody, and he ended up becoming the only heretic in American history whose books were literally burned by the government."

"Have you ever considered the possibility that God might be a crazy woman? Or that John Dillinger died for you? Do you think there might be a secret technique by which the Enlightened can literally get Something for Nothing? Could the Martians have the true religion while Earthians are lost in superstitious darkness? Can a cup of coffee be a sacrament, and if not, why not? Does the mathematics of six-dimensional space-time and philosophy of Multi-Ego Pantheistic Solipsism explain the universe? If none of these metaphysical questions have crossed your mind before, this is because Ireland has, as everybody knows, the One True Religion; but over the sea in America, where they started out with at least a dozen True Religions before the Revolution and then wrote absolute religious freedom into their Constitution, they now have literally hundreds of True Religions, and have explored every possible or thinkable theological doctrine, including all of the alternatives mentioned above. With typical American exuberance, they will no doubt be exploring the impossible and unthinkable in the near future, since their politics already contain those elements."

"Friends! Everything Pope Bob does puts things into a perspective, and not just a unique perspective, BUT THE CORRECT PERSPECTIVE! WHICH DOES INCLUDE ALL OTHER PERSPECTIVES! And so, my friends, I am very happy and proud to present the Carl Sagan of religion, the Jerry Falwell of quantum physics, the Arnold Schwarzenegger of feminism, the Helen Keller of art and music, the Nelson Mandela of White Supremacists, the James Joyce of Swing Set Assembly Manuals, the Lenny Bruce of Funerals, the Salvador Dali of Assembly Line Workers, and folks, the of Humanity.""

"G.W.F. Hegel. He's perfect, Weishaupt wrote.... Unlike Kant, who makes sense only in German, this man doesn't make sense in any language."

"Having a spine is overrated. If everybody squealed and ran away, there'd be no more wars."

"Groups are grammatical fictions; only individuals exist, and each individual is different."

"Here's what it is, here's what it isn't, now here's why you need to go tell everyone how smart I am."

"He was harassed, but still he spoke with authority. He was, in fact, characteristic of the best type of dominant male in the world at this time. He was fifty-five years old, tough, shrewd, unburdened by the complicated ethical ambiguities which puzzle intellectuals, and had long ago decided that the world was a mean son-of-a-bitch in which only the most cunning and ruthless can survive. He was also as kind as was possible for one holding that ultra-Darwinian philosophy; and he genuinely loved children and dogs, unless they were on the site of something that had to be bombed in the National Interest. He still retained some sense of humor, despite the burdens of his almost godly office, and, although he had been impotent with his wife for nearly ten years now, he generally achieved orgasm in the mouth of a skilled prostitute within 1.5 minutes. He took amphetamine pep pills to keep going on his grueling twenty-hour day, with the result that his vision of the world was somewhat skewed in a paranoid direction, and he took tranquilizers to keep from worrying too much, with the result that his detachment sometimes bordered on the schizophrenic; but most of the time his innate shrewdness gave him a fingernail grip on reality."

"Help conquer the IQ shortage - worry less and think more."

"History, sociology, economics, psychology et al. confirmed Joyce's view of Everyman as victim."

"Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history."

"How many times... have you encountered the saying, 'When the student is ready, the Master speaks?' Do you know why that is true? The door opens inward. The Master is everywhere, but the student has to open his mind to hear the Masters Voice."

"How, how, how did we ever get ourselves in a predicament where an Oriental-style despot controls American medicine and most doctors fear to prescribe what they think best for their patients?"

"Human beings live in their myths. They only endure their realities."

"Humans live through their myths and only endure their realities."

"Human society as a whole is a vast brainwashing machine whose semantic rules and sex roles create a social robot."

"I can only conclude that I am indeed like a visitor from non-Euclidean dimensions whose outlines are perplexing to the Euclidean inhabitants of various dogmatic Flatlands. Or else, Lichtenstein was right when he said a book ?is a mirror. When a monkey looks in, no philosopher looks out.? Of course, we are living in curved space (as noted by Einstein); that should warn us that Euclidean metaphors are always misleading. Science has also discovered that the Universe can count above two, which should make us leery of either/or choices. There are eight ? count ?em, eight ? theories or models in quantum mechanics, all of which use the same equations but have radically different philosophical meanings; physicists have accepted the multi-model approach (or ?model agnosticism?) for over 60 years now. In modern mathematics and logic, in addition to the two-valued (yes/no) logic of Aristotle and Boole, there are several three-valued logics (e.g. the yes, no and maybe Quantum Logic of von Neumann; the yes, no and po of psychologist Edward de Bono; etc.), at least one four-valued logic (the true, false, indeterminate and meaningless of Rapoport), and an infinite-valued logic (Korzybski). I myself have presented a multi-valued logic in my neuroscience seminars; the bare bones of this system will be found in my book, The New Inquisition. Two-valued Euclidean choices ? left or right of an imaginary line ? do not seem very ?real? to me, in comparison to the versatility of modern science and mathematics. Actually, it was once easy to classify me in simple Euclidean topology. To paraphrase a recent article by the brilliant Michael Hoy [Critique #19/ 20], I had a Correct Answer Machine installed in my brain when I was quite young. It was a right-wing Correct Answer Machine in general and Roman Catholic in particular. It was installed by nuns who were very good at creating such machines and implanting them in helpless children. By the time I got out of grammar school, in 1945, I had the Correct Answer for everything, and it was the Correct Answer that you will nowadays still hear from, say, William Buckley, Jr."

"I am 100 per cent in favor of studying conspiracy theories because, next to quantum mechanics, they represent the best test of how well you can handle ambiguity and uncertainty. Most people at present cannot handle indeterminacy at all and generally evade it by rushing to premature certitude. If you really study conspiracy theory carefully, examining all its flavors, the result is like studying quantum theory and all of its conflicting models. You either go bonkers or you learn to think beyond the Aristotelian either/or logic of our culture. The best way to study conspiracy theory without swallowing one theory whole is to prepare yourself by a thorough training in classical logic, fuzzy logic, general semantics and quite a bit of Zen-Sufi humor, until you have internalized the realization that Universe is infinite chaos and any model you make at a date cannot possibly contain all of it but only represents the mixture of your knowledge and ignorance at that date."

"I began serious study of other consciousness-altering systems, including techniques of yoga, Zen, Sufism and Cabala. I, alas, became a ?mystic? of some sort, although still within the framework of existentialism-phenomenology-operationalism. But, then, Buddhism ? the organized mystic movement I find least objectionable ? is also existentialist, phenomenologist and operationalist."

"I celebrate the majority with Whitmanesque rhapsody. The so-called Elite-- specifically, the 1/2 of 1% who own damn near everything, especially the politicians and the media -- spent THREE BILLION DOLLARS on this malign fiesta and still couldn't convince most of us that a choice between two over-rouged old whores like Gush and Bore matters a damn."

"I can summarize my thoughts now by simply saying each must find his or her own Way because the way does not exist."

"I didn't know what I saw -- swamp gas, space ship, sundog, weather balloon. What impressed me was my parents' fear of reporting the sighting. I realized that even in our allegedly rational age many things remain unspeakable -- damned, blasphemous. George Carlin can't do his comedy on networks because the comedy depends on taboo words. We remain governed by taboo to an astounding extent."

"I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions."

"I don't do well speaking about things I don't know anything about, so I'll speak instead about the Unknown and the Inexplicable. I find them inexhaustibly entertaining as objects of speculation, since they obviously include a lot more than the known and the explicated. I suspect and almost believe that the Unknown and Inexplicable played a role in the design of the DNA molecule, as suggested by Sir Francis Crick, Sir Fred Hoyle, Dr. Timothy Leary and others. I also suspect that the Unknown has meddled a lot in human affairs, and the Inexplicable has laid hands, or tentacles, or something, on us many times. As Thomas Huxley said, the universe acts a lot like a chess game in which the player on the other side remains invisible to us. By analyzing the moves, we try to form an image of the intellect behind them. Images that have seemed almost believable to me at various times have included the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece (if you develop a Classic Poetry habit, that kind of neuro-linguistic programming can happen...) and also, of course, those extra-terrestrials who have so much popularity these days. I have also considered the player on the other side as more impersonal, like the Tao, or more bizarre, like Shiva Dancing, or more abstract, like Philip K. Dick's Vast Active Living Information System (VALIS.) Mostly, though I think of the player on the other side as a pookah -- a resident of Ireland, in rabbit form, who may at any time dump a truckload of the Unknown and Inexplicable right on your doorstep."

"I don't believe anything I write or say. I regard belief as a form of brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the atrophy of imagination. I have opinions but no Belief System (B.S.)."

"I have always dreaded both Ideology and Theology, because they make people cruel. It now appears to me that ordinary men ? and occasionally ordinary women ? do monstrous things for their Ideologies and Theologies only because politics and religion function largely, like advertising, through hypnotism and self-hypnotism."

"I find the most interesting ideas in traditional Buddhism, Nietzsche, Charles Fort, several quantum physicists (Nick Herbert, David Bohm, Fred Wolfe, David Finkelstein) and in Rupert Sheldrake. Add together the Buddhist yoga of detachment from fixed ideas and emotions, Nietzche's and Fort's merciless assault on the cultural prejudices that are so deeply embedded we usually don't notice them, quantum uncertainty and holism, Sheldrake's special variety of holism, and I think we have the beginning of a hint of the New Paradigm we need. But after looking at this list I realize I should have included Korzybski's general semantics, Bandler's neuro-linguistic programming and Leary's evolutionary-existentialist neuro-psychology or info-psychology as he most recently labelled it."

"I go to a pub and talk to another man. He is experienced deeply part of the time, and shallowly another part of the time, depending on the quality of my consciousness. If I am very conscious, meeting him can be an experience comparable to great music or even an earthquake; if I am in the usual shallow state, he barely "makes an impression." If I am practicing alertness and neurological self-criticism, I may observe that I am only experiencing him part of the time, and that part of the time I am not-tuning-in but drifting off to my favorite ?Real? Universe and editing out at the ear-drum much of what he is saying. Often, the ?Real? Universe hypnotizes me sufficiently that, while I ?hear? what he says, I have no idea of the way he says it or what he means to convey."

"I have never experienced another human being. I have experienced my impressions of them. If lawyers had been present on Mount Sinai, the Ten Commandments would have twelve hundred amendments, all summing to the conclusion: The rich may ignore the rules, the poor will be hanged if they violate the smallest subordinate clause."

"I first heard of the 23 Enigma from William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, Nova Express, etc. According to Burroughs, he had known a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That very day, Clark?s ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude example of the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another Captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23."

"I have read a great deal of economic theory for over 50 years now, but have found only one economic law to which I can find NO exceptions: Where the State prevents a free market, by banning any form of goods or services, consumer demand will create a black market for those goods or services, at vastly higher prices. Can YOU think of a single exception to this law?"

"I kind of suspect that hyperlinking encourages holistic or at least nonlinear perception, but I had a lot of experience with that before the Web. Most of my favorite 20th century writers --especially Joyce, Pound, Williams, Burroughs -- seem to have a hyperlinked style. McLuhan compared them to the front page of the New York Times and Kenner compared them to film montage. It's all blended in my head --nonlinear page make-up in journalism, montage in film, collage in painting, Joyce, Pound, Williams, Burroughs, now the Web -- and being stoned certainly helps you groove with that kind of "cubist" sensibility. In fact, stoned dial surfing on TV makes for much the same effect. (I once thought I invented dial surfing but so many others invented it at about the same time I don't think we'll ever know who was first.)"

"I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread."

"I see no reason to believe that only an elite is capable of this evolutionary leap forward, especially as the new tools and training techniques are becoming more simple. In neuroscience as in all technology, we seem to follow Bucky Fuller?s rule that each breakthrough allows us to do more work with less effort and to create more wealth out of less raw matter. I see no reason to believe that only an elite is capable of this evolutionary leap forward, especially as the new tools and training techniques are becoming more simple. In neuroscience as in all technology, we seem to follow Bucky Fuller?s rule that each breakthrough allows us to do more work with less effort and to create more wealth out of less raw matter."

"I regard the Web as the closest approximation yet achieved to the ideal of a free marketplace of ideas. The Marxist criticism of democracy ("freedom of the press belongs only to those who own the press") has always been uncomfortably close to the truth. But with the Web (and newsgroups, chat rooms etc.) more people have more freedom of the press or freedom of speech than ever before. I believe that is the most positive development in this"

"I recently heard an old man of right-wing views?a friend of my grandparents??assert that the current wave of assassinations in America is the work of a secret society called the Illuminati. He said that the Illuminati have existed throughout history, own the international banking cartels, have all been 32nd-degree Masons and were known to Ian Fleming, who portrayed them as SPECTRE in his James Bond books?for which the Illuminati did away with Mr. Fleming. At first, this all seemed like a paranoid delusion to me. Then I read in The New Yorker that Allan Chapman, one of Jim Garrison?s investigators in the New Orleans probe of the John Kennedy assassination, believes that the Illuminati really exist. The next step in my galloping descent into credulity occurred when I mentioned this subject to a friend who is majoring in Middle Eastern affairs. He told me the Illuminati were actually of Arabic origin and that their founder was the legendary ?old man of the mountains,? who used marijuana to work up a murderous frenzy and who fought against both the Crusaders and the orthodox Moslems, adding that their present ruler is the Aga Khan; but, he said, it is now merely a harmless religious order known as Ishmailianism. I then began to wonder seriously about all this. I mentioned it to a friend from Berkeley. He immediately told me that there is a group on campus that calls itself the Illuminati and boasts that it secretly controls international finance and the mass media. Now (if Playboy isn?t part of the Illuminati conspiracy), can you tell me: Are the Illuminati part of the Masons? Is Aga Khan their leader? Do they really own all the banks and TV stations? And who have they killed lately?"

"I regard "ideology" and "morality" as the two most dangerous forces on this planet. About "ideology" I have expressed my suspicions elsewhere; here I will only mention John Adams's verdict that shortening "ideology" to "idiocy" would save some space and add a great deal to clarity. He had the French Revolution in mind, but "ideologists" haven't changed much since then, have they?"

"I regard the two major male archetypes in 20th Century literature as Leopold Bloom and Hannibal Lecter. M.D. Bloom, the perpetual victim, the kind and gentle fellow who finishes last, represented an astonishing breakthrough to new levels of realism in the novel, and also symbolized the view of humanity that hardly anybody could deny c. 1900-1950. History, sociology, economics, psychology et al. confirmed Joyce?s view of Everyman as victim. Bloom, exploited and downtrodden by the Brits for being Irish and rejected by many of the Irish for being Jewish, does indeed epiphanize humanity in the first half of the 20th Century. And he remains a nice guy despite everything that happens."

"I see the power game resting on three levels of force and fraud. First, earliest and still most powerful is the government racket itself, the monopoly on force (military power, police power, etc.) which allows the governing group to take tribute (taxation) from the enslaved or deluded masses. Second, derivative from this primordial conquest is the landlord racket, the mammalian monopoly on territory which allows the king's relations (lords-of-the-land) or their successors, today's "land-lords," to take tribute (rent) from those who live within the territory. Rent is the daughter of taxation; the second degree of the same racket. Third, the latest in historical time, is the usury racket, the monopoly on the issue of currency which allows the money lords to take tribute (interest) on the creation of money or credit, and on the continuous circulation of the money or credit every step of the way. Interest is the son of rent, the rent of money. Since most people engaged in nefarious practices are, in my opinion, very loathe to acknowledge what they are doing, and are addicted to the same hypocrisies as the rest of humanity, I think all power groups quite sincerely believe that what they are doing is proper, and that anybody who attacks them is a revolutionary nut. Outside of the Klingons on Star Trek, I have never encountered a real predator who justifies himself on Stirnerite or Machiavellian grounds. I really think Saroyan was right, naive as it sounds, in saying that "every man is a good man in his own eyes.""

"I started out in a little tiny Irish Catholic ghetto in Brooklyn or Long Island, I'm not sure which, and somehow I have traveled from Maui in the East to Berlin in the West, which is half of the time zones on the planet. And I feel like as I've expanded my travel in space, I've expanded my travel through the world of ideas also. And I can't believe I started out a good Catholic school boy."

"I was a very obedient child. Everybody agrees to that. Everybody I can remember from my childhood. I started rebelling in my teens, and I'm rebelling more every year. I remember, I don't know how old I was, 14, 15, another unbeliever and myself at Brooklyn Tech got into an argument with a student who was still a Catholic, and he said, "If you really believe what you say, you would have the courage to ask God to strike you dead right now to prove that you believe he doesn't exist." And I got scared for a minute, but then I went ahead and did it and nothing happened. And I felt totally liberated. "Fuck you, you're not there after all!" That was a great moment of liberation which I hardly ever recalled until tonight. My God, a very important turning point in my life. Here's to the good nuns for telling me what books not to read."

"I will officially announce that everyone in this room is now a Discordian Pope, just like me."

"I think I got off on the wrong planet. Beam me up Scotty, there?s no rational life here."

"I used to be an atheist, until I realized I had nothing to shout during blowjobs. "Oh Random Chance! Oh Random Chance!" just doesn't cut it."

"I worked, long ago, in New York City, in construction, like many young men of the Mohawk Nation. I found that whites were often like us, and I could not hate them one at a time. But they do not know the earth or love it. They do not speak from the heart, usually. They do not act from the heart. They are more like the actors on the movie screen. They play roles. And their leaders are not like our leaders. They are not chosen for virtue, but for their skill at playing roles. Whites have told me this, in plain words. They do not trust their leaders, and yet they follow them. When we do not trust a leader, he is finished. Then, also, the leaders of the whites have too much power. It is bad for a man to be obeyed too often. But the worst thing is what I have said about the heart. Their leaders have lost it and they have lost mercy. They speak from somewhere else. They act from somewhere else. But from where? Like you, I do not know. It is, I think, a kind of insanity."